We can’t just keep preaching to women about how to be good wives, while telling young men that “if he finds a wife he findeth a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord”. We have to start talking about how men can make good husbands too.
The rhetoric is so one sided, that many women don’t even know how to notice signs of antisocial personality disorder, hidden mental illness, chronic womanizing/sexual addiction, alcoholism, drug abuse, irresponsibility and a host of other challenges. Many women don’t ask themselves what role a man should play in their lives, and what role a woman should play. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. If you want a child- adult partnership, then depend on your husband for everything without bringing anything to the table except your beauty. But don’t complain when he doesn’t respect you as a partner.
Many women in our culture, are just happy that husband came to them, but don’t question, “what type?”. There is nothing good about bringing in a bunch of kids you can’t help if something happened to your husband, or kids that will suffer in the hands of an abuser.
It is very important to know why you accept a man, especially if you can feed yourself and don’t sleep outdoors. A man should not show up to insult you or harass you in order to show you “who is in charge”. That is nonsense. An intelligent man will realize you value his companionship, and respect him “by choice”. Not because you lack money and the ability to survive.
Unfortunately, many of our men are keeping our society backwards in failure because the success of any society starts from the home. If we say we must keep women down, to preserve our family units, is this working? We are full of paradoxes and confusion as a society. We waste money and resources educating our daughters, yet fear them afterwards for marriage.
Some enlightened men understand that a woman’s character is what matters, and can actually benefit from her training or education for the good of the entire family. What use is submission due to necessity when a woman lacks survival skills/education? It breeds sadism. We are breeding a bunch of men who think female submission entails disrespecting, beating, blocking success, hating achievements, and in all aspects, actually being an “enemy” to the women they claim to love.
Simply put, a lot of men these days are not measuring up. When you have no money, a bad, arrogant and belittling, scornful attitude towards women; no solid plan, vision or direction; no planning or thought about what you will offer your wife and future family; yet show up with contempt to grab a “wife” simply because you are a man, you are “bad husband material”. Yes, there are many “poor” wizards. They expect you to value them for their gender, and come with their list of requirements in a lady. Meanwhile, they offer nothing. They expect you to endure with them in their poverty of mind and spirit, yet cannot appreciate a single thing about you sincerely, apart from what they can “benefit”.
There are men that, if you try to communicate, they will immediately get angry. You should have zero standards about how you should be treated in life. Afterall, you are past 30. They are doing you a favor by showing up. Yet you will support them financially while they are waiting to join you abroad, ( if you live there). You will pay for embassy runs/visa, passport, airplane tickets, feeding on arrival, accomodations, green card, settling in, job hunting runs etc. Guess what? Because it was so easy for him and you are a tool, he will harass you with another woman, and eventually discard you because he needs someone “weaker” that he feels bigger than. But even if you, as a lady are the one who walks out of an abusive relationship, our society may see you as the one who was abandoned due to a defect. If you have marital problems, maybe your fault. If you divorce, maybe your fault. If you have no children or only girls, maybe your fault. See the cycle? We teach many of our men to take zero responsibility for relationships, yet, they are the “ideal leaders” that are leading our society into a better future? See the irony?
A Nigerian woman may pay for her own wedding, all while pretending she is in marriage heaven. Many women both home and in diaspora serve wicked men from our culture who use them as maids and “wives in waiting”. No boundaries are too big to cross these days. We dream of a good society while we watch our men turn to wolves. In societies with similar conservative expectations of women like ours, the men protect them. If you disvirgin a girl you are not married to in Saudi Arabia, India, etc, you will face the music. You cannot co-habit with a lady to get residency. Many of our men want virgins, women without children, submissive innocent ladies, yet they run after girls to desecrate like packs of wolves. Why do we pretend we have culture? We don’t. We say it. But we don’t implement it.
We have many good men, but also many who
are lacking. The worst part is mothers who train their sons in such culture to be bad leaders. People who are always right in their own eyes, selfish and self -serving. The attitude is, “I deserve everything because I am a man”. This attitude is more glaring overseas where men and women both face environmental pressures. Yet, women still have the roles of child-bearing, motherhood, domestic work, jobs outside the home, all without any househelp. Many Nigerian husbands who are not enlightened will not lift a finger to help, but enjoy their wives’ efforts, cooking, comfort and everything else while mainly sleeping, watching TV, partying etc if not at their jobs. On top of all this, they will display volcano like angry eruptions over every little thing with the excuse that “overseas is stressful”. Is it not stressful for ladies?
I am not condemning Nigerian men or praising Nigerian women. Sure, there are greedy, lazy, and irresponsible women also. This post is mainly directed towards the men for now. Because most problems in a society stem from the top. Our society is falling apart at the seams because we lack good Leadership, not only in government, but in the homes. What used to be taboo yesterday, is happening consistently. It is becoming harder to “trust”, because the same greed and corruption exhibited on all levels of our society, dominates relationships today. People are after what they can “get”. Many men are no longer men, but have no shame in using women, children, whoever or whatever for ill-gotten gains that never last. People have gone mad.
The bad names some arrogant ones used to call people they thought live irresponsibly like “akata”, better refers to them. Those they called such are more respectful, respectable, straightforward, (not as deceptive or full of 419), and responsible. Look around our society full of drugheads, baby mamas and papas, kidnappers, armed robbers, Yahoo plus that will use baby Pampers or women’s underwear, ritualists etc, and tell me, what is there to look forward to in relationships or anything else from such a society if we don’t change? We need men who are trained and who accept mentorship from elders. Not a bunch of “African” looking men who have no decent “African” values in them.